Chapter 12: MR500 2010

27 March 2010: Day 1 of MR500

As some of you may know, I was representing Safra to row for the MR500 Corporate Mixed as they needed left-overs. I mean..left rowers muahaha :p

So anw Annie and I are the "foreign talent" tt Doreen managed to ask. The guys team were involved in the Corporate Club challenge today.

foreign talents aka left-overs :p

doreen and her 2 'foreign talents'-annie and i (we are playin tiz game called 'chin attack')

We didn't have any event for the day. However, we still went down nonetheless to render our support for the guys.

Since I wasn't involved in any races, and I had a 约定 with cookie (rachael's dog) to let her meet sunny..I decided to bring sunny down too!

cookie! hw can anyone have forgotten hw she looks like

when sunny saw cookie..he got so 热情 tt he stood on his hind legs and was tryin so hard to reach for her backside to sniff her out(rachael was carryin cookie then). Poor rachael had his scratch marks on her thighs cz of sunny! omg..sunny can be so erm..over friendly? Not shy? hahaha

Although the ladies didnt have any race for the day, we had to report at 9am. I reached at 910am..opps! *point finger at sunny* haha

Today, I saw Rang and Raine. Needless to say, we as batch mates had to take a pic (the pix is in my camera and i'm extremely slow to upload..)

Most, if nt all of those whom I know said this when they saw me, "Cindy! I saw Sunny first before I saw u.."

So anw this is sunny boy..the attention-grabber and all-time charmer :]

sunny saw some pretty gals walk past..
lynn said sunny pulled so hard when he saw a male dog. Oh no! my silly boy seems to have an identity crisis.
Diz boy really have eyes tt melt ur heart. he always gets his way when it comes to food :p
lynn and sunny

race day is a gd opportunity to catch up with team mates and juz chit chat. well, even if there's ntg much to talk, there's always sunny ard and he's a gd ice breaker. It normally starts with, "omg..so cute! wad's his name again? how old is sunny alr?"

saw many familiar faces, including rang, raine, zee, sharon, qianyi, joanna, sarah ching, angeline, karine and gwen. Which actually adds to a neat number of 10. juz the right number to form a women's crew and omg..believe it or not..its 5 left and 5 right!

now all we nd is just a drummer and a coxwain..well tts easy! lijun baby and boon chin :p just imagine how cool will that be. we stand gd chance actually. 3 from national team (angeline, i still count u in..), 6 frm mountbatten, 1 frm SPC. I can be the reserve (or drummer?)! woohoo~

Wah i'm thinkin too much man. "胡思乱想又过了一夜，思念的疑问并没有解决，我又胡思乱想过了一夜" :p

Ok anw back to MR500 Day 1. it was an eventful day and our guys managed to advance to the grand finals and came in 3rd. Well done guys!

clockwise from left:annie, me, kenneth, agnes, doreen, lynn and sunny
clockwise: lynn, agnes, doreen and annie
tts xiao pei ( 小瓜. now our youngest in the team hee), me, sunny, annie and doreen

28 March 2010: Day 2 of MR500

Mixed crew..it's the "foreign talent's" turn for some action! Didnt bring sunny today cz I thought it's gonna be impossible to look aft him and remain focused. We came down at 730am and brought food cz the coffee shop was quite far away.

for the heats, we came in 3rd and managed to advance to the semi finals cz our timing was gd enuf. The set was really kinda crappy cz nearing the end which was where we were supposed to execute the charge, we cldn't. the pace was too fast (nt the pacer's fault..everyone is to be blamed) and it wasn't effective enough for all of us to synergise.

In short, the set sucked. It was really terrible. The debrief was exceptionally long as we chipped in to evaluate on what have been done and what can be done.

We break for lunch and had a gd spread of food. Oh I muz say smtg! zee finally returned my all-time favourite NUS Dragonboat Ladies black jersey to me..aft 'kidnapping' it for 2 yrs. hahaha. so happy to finally reunite with my jersey :p

i dunno why but my team mates always seem to snap pix of me in my most unglam moment!

e.g no. 1: 见牙不见眼
e.g no. 2: when i'm sleeping
i was obviously nt aware of wad's going on..even my shades were missing! nonetheless, i still like diz pix cz I look tone and lean somehow muahaha

e.g. no. 3: being stoned Roarz!

There was a tak-glam moment when zee sat beside me and we were talkin and thinkin back abt the gd ol days. Then zee said, "yah cindy, u are always on time, never late!" and annie (who was beside me) heard. She laughed in disbelief cz i'm usually 10-15min late for trgs in ocbc. hee cannot help it la, have to rush frm work :p At best i usually reach on the dot.

Then zee started tellin annie and hw it was detrimental to be late for trg in the past, and hw cruel i was and asked her to go home cz she turned up late for trg. hahaha opps. well u see..aft u graduate, things r different. u assimilate to a new team, new culture :p muahaha

Ok I digress-ed again. Back to MR500 day 2. We executed some gd sets of shadow rowing prior to launching for our semi finals. There was no room for making mistakes and aft the emotional debrief earlier, we knew we had to focus on what we can do better. We had to make this right.

The set in the semi finals was awesome~ from start to end, everyone felt damn gd. the pace was challenging and it gave us sufficient adrenaline rush, yet at the same time everyone was rowing as "1 boat, 1 stroke, 1 heart"

Well, although it wasn't gd enuf for us to progress to the finals, the feeling was so memorable tt we just have to anchor it down and seize every opportunity to remember this feeling which doesn't come by easily.

We packed up at abt 345pm. No doubt we were disappointed that it ended juz like that. somehow that feeling is so familiar. its the bitter taste of defeat that nobody likes to swallow and this bitterness somehow lingers.

But of course it's nt the end. It never is. I always believe it takes losing to know winning. Today's defeat is tmr's victory, if but we use defeat as a lesson and a motivation. It can only get better!

Wad fails to kill u makes u stronger